Market leaderManagement has repeatedly shown knack of being at right place (technology/product wise) at the right timeExcellent benefits - especially gold plated health planVery bright peopleQualcomm is an excellent company which has execution at all costs as its DNA. This has served the organization well as they have been able to capture the cellular market with being able to deliver extremely quickly while others have struggled.

Cons

The dark side is the human cost of the execution driven culture. There is absolutely no respect for the personal life of the engineers. People are supposed to be able to drop everything at a moment's notice to work round the clock for months including days, nights, weekends etc.

Mid-level managers threaten (by extensive name dropping), cajole and browbeat people into making them work crazy hours.

The reason for all this is the explosion of products in the last few years. There is surprisingly little commonality and leverage between products and the feature combinations are so numerous that a lot of engineering time is spent repeatedly integrating and verifying legacy features. In addition the development environment and tools are abysmal. Given the stressful environment and lots of grunt work there is very little professional growth.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Prune upper management ranks. There are too many VPs and above for an organization this sizeThe actual technical muscle is swamped by layers and layers of managers whose sole purpose is to convey status above and pressure people belowThe product lines need to be drastically cut and simplifiedMost importantly improve development tools. Make platforms common and evolve them